


Want

by LearnedFoot



Series: Nebula! [4]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Ghost Assignment, Nebula-centric (Marvel), Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, POV Nebula (Marvel), feelings are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-05 19:36:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20278693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearnedFoot/pseuds/LearnedFoot
Summary: Gamora started it, because Gamora was always the one to start things.





	Want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).

> Does it count as drawerfic if none of it was actually written down but a lot of it was written in my head as a treat for you that never happened? Anyway, here it is now.

**1.**

Gamora started it, because Gamora was always the one to start things, nursing a spark of want, tamped down and hidden but never quite extinguished. She snuck handfuls of berries as a child, when their father led them deep into the forest to train; later, she became bolder, finding nooks and crannies in his fortress call her own. Sometimes she brought Nebula into her secrets. Nebula would balk and protest the acts of defiance, but in the end she always followed, because she wanted those freedoms as much as anyone, and wanted her sister’s attention most of all.

So of course it was Gamora who was the one to come to Nebula’s room, deep at night, when it was dark and quiet. So late that the only reason Nebula was still awake was the spasms shooting through her muscles, reminders of another lost fight hours earlier.

Gamora slid into her bed. “Fighting makes me want,” she whispered. “Does it make you want?”

Nebula didn’t know what she meant. Gamora showed her, sinking her teeth into her neck and then her breasts, hands fumbling, uncharacteristically uncoordinated. Then Nebula understood. Yes, she wanted too.

It wasn’t fighting that made her want, though. It was Gamora—always Gamora. But she didn’t tell her that.

***

They were both too young, too inexperienced, to know what to do, but they learned, that night and nights that followed. How to take each other apart with fingers and lips and tongues and once, when Gamora was feeling bold, with the hilt of a knife, shoved hard and fast, rough leather rubbing Nebula’s insides until she screamed from pain that was pleasure, even then not able to tell the two apart.

They never talked about it. Gamora came when she wanted, left when she was done, still beat Nebula every time their father put them in battle. And he did, more and more, taking Nebula apart in a different way, more literal, every time she lost.

“You have to be ready,” he told them when Gamora—frustrated at the frequency of their ‘training,’ as if such a mild word could capture the hell they put each other through—finally spat that it was too much. “You’re growing up so quickly.”

His eyes fell on Nebula as he said it, and with dreadful certainty she knew he knew. This was punishment.

She didn’t tell Gamora, didn’t ask her to stop. But a few months later their father decided enough was enough. He didn’t say it so directly, of course, but when he sealed her up, pulling out the parts that could feel pleasure, trading pliant skin for cold unyielding metal, the message was clear.

That was the end of it. The next time Gamora slipped into her room, Nebula turned her away, pain and shame and fear coming out as a growl.

“Leave me alone,” she barked. “This is your fault.”

“It’s not,” Gamora replied. “It’s his.”

But she left. She never came back.

**2.**

Nebula saw the way Gamora looked at the Terran. Her eyes went soft when he laughed. He was so easy and open with his jokes and his smiles. Oafish, dumb and reckless and doughy, but spontaneous. Joyful, even in battle. She understood: he was everything their father had tried to rip from them. Of course Gamora protected him, fought for him, most of all longed for him.

She didn’t say it, may not have been ready to admit it even to herself, but Nebula could tell, because she knew her sister. Knew the signs of her want, could still remember the feel of that gaze across her own body, dragging down her skin as firm as any touch.

Nebula longed, too, but not for an irreverent man-child from a far off planet.

So she left. She had gained a sister—or, perhaps better: gained her sister back—and she was more grateful for that than she could find words to express. But she was not interested in watching that sister fall in love with a man who was everything Nebula could not be.

Let Gamora be happy. Nebula would have her revenge, and that would be enough.

***

It took her years, but she did it. Driven by hatred and grief and a single-minded need to not think about anything else, she found their father, surprised him in a moment of distraction. Sunk a knife into his heart, stared him in the eyes while he died.

In the moment, she felt triumph. But her joy did not last long. As the universe opened in front of her, suddenly free and empty, welcoming her to wander it without a goal, she wondered: _what now?_

**3.**

She began by trading her skillset for money and rides and weapons, until killing for hire started to feel too much like killing for Thanos. She refused to hurt the innocent, but even so, murdering bad people for other bad people was an empty way to live.

She wondered when she had changed, and what she was supposed to change into instead. A woman of metal and wires trained for a single purpose, seeking a new one: there weren’t many people who could give advice on that. She didn’t talk to people much, anyway. Found them frightening and strange, never stayed in one place long enough to get used to anyone.

She tried farming for a few months, stopping at the agrarian corner of a planet her father had laid to waste, but it didn’t take. Meaningless slaughter felt wrong, but the tedium of steady work left her wanting to claw the metal from her body, anxious roiling boredom threatening to consume her.

She took off for the stars again, and went back to killing. But this time, she killed bad people for good people. If the only thing she knew how to be was a weapon, at least she could choose which direction to point herself in. She took particular pleasure in the jobs that allowed her to right some of her father’s wrongs; took them for free, scavenging on the side when she was desperate for money.

This felt better: the rush of adrenaline without the sour taste of being the broken, dangerous thing her father had made her. It was not happiness, but perhaps it was enough. Certainly it was much more than she had ever hoped, and she shut down the part of her that asked why she had to be content with so little.

***

Three years after she killed her father she met Gamora again. They had come to rescue the same political prisoners from the same despot, a man who had taken over in the wake of one of their father’s last massacres. 

The shock almost knocked her out of the fight. But she regained her balance, swallowed her surprise, focused on driving her knives into the flesh in front of her. Focused, because if she did not focus, she might fall apart.

After—they were successful, of course, they always had been when they worked together—Gamora slid up beside her.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said, voice gentle, as if she still expected Nebula to be half-wild and ready to run.

Nebula made herself to smile, to prove her wrong. “Where are your friends?”

“They had another job. But I thought I might find you here.” She reached out, placing her hand on Nebula’s shoulder, touch lighter than Nebula can remember her ever being. “You killed our father.”

“I did. Years ago.” Nebula did not offer an explanation for her absence, for why she did not seek her sister out after she succeeded. Gamora knew, or she didn’t, Nebula was not going to make it clear.

“Come back with me. I want you with us.” Gamora squeezed, nails digging into Nebula’s skin. That was more like the touch she remembered. “Peter and I…we didn’t work out.”

Nebula’s breath stuttered. Gamora knew, then. No other reason to tell her that. She didn’t say anything, because she didn’t know what to say. She stared at Gamora instead, as open as she could make herself.

It must be enough, because Gamora smiled, a smile with teeth. “Does fighting still make you want, sister?”

It had never been the fighting, but she certainly still wanted. She nodded, and Gamora took her hand.


End file.
